February 08, 2013 "Information
Clearing House"
-
MADISON, NJ - By a two-to-one margin (48%-24%) American
voters say they think it is illegal for the U.S. government
to target its own citizens living abroad with drone attacks,
according to a recent national survey of registered voters
by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind. Just 24
percent say it is legal, agreeing with the position taken by
the US Attorney and the Obama administration.

“The
public clearly makes an assumption very different from that
of the Obama administration or Mr. Brennan: the public
thinks targeting American citizens abroad is out of bounds,”
said Peter Woolley, professor of political science at
Fairleigh Dickinson University and analyst for PublicMind.

Support or opposition to the legality of drone attacks on
Americans does not vary by party identification.
Republicans are just as likely as Democrats or independents
to say it is illegal, or that the U.S. government can do it.
And men are just as likely as women (47% and 48%) to think
it is illegal, though more men than women say it is legal
(30% versus 18%). Non-whites are significantly more likely
than whites (57% versus 44%) to think it is illegal to
target American citizens abroad.

However, by a wide six-to-one margin (75%-13%) voters
approve of the U.S. military using drones to carry out
attacks abroad “on people and other targets deemed a threat
to the U.S.” Republicans, men and whites approve more
strongly than Democrats, women, and non-whites, but approval
is robust in all demographic categories.

Voters
also approve by a strong three-to-one margin (65%-21%) the
CIA using drones to carry out attacks abroad, but this
approval is significantly less than approval for the U.S.
military carrying out such attacks.

“Clearly some people think it’s important to make a
distinction between the military and the CIA,” said Woolley.
“In fact, in any given demographic category, approval of CIA
drone attacks is 8 to 17 percentage points less than support
for U.S. military attacks.”

One
clear finding is that U.S. voters are paying attention to
drones. About two-thirds (65%) say they’ve heard some or a
lot about the pilotless machines. Fewer than one-in-six
(15%) say they’ve heard nothing. Republicans are more likely
than Democrats to say that they’ve heard a lot about the
drones (45% compared to 29%). And twice as many men as
women (51% versus 23%) claim to have heard “a lot” about the
drones.

The
Fairleigh Dickinson University poll of 814 registered voters
was conducted nationally by telephone with both landline and
cell phones from December 10 through December 16, 2012, and
has a margin of error of +/-3.4 percentage points.

But,
when it comes to drones, the fight in Washington has
no parallel in the public at large. Put simply: Americans
love drones.

A look
across the polling landscape on the Obama Administration’s
increased reliance on drones suggests that support for the
strikes is not only wide but also bipartisan.

A
February 2012 Washington Post-ABC poll showed that eight
in ten Americans (83 percent) approved of the Obama
Administrations use of unmanned drones against suspected
terrorists overseas — with a whopping 59 percent
strongly
approving of the practice. Support for the drone attacks was
also remarkably bipartisan. Seventy six percent of
Republicans and 58 percent of Democrats approved of the
policy.

In
that same poll, respondents were asked whether they
supported using drones to target American citizens who are
suspected terrorists, the question that stands at the heart
of the recent flare-up in Congress over the practice. Two
thirds of people in the survey said they approved of doing
so.

It’s
not just Post-ABC polling that suggests the use of drones is
widely popular with the American public.
A September 2011 Pew poll showed that 69 percent of
people said that the increased use of drones was a good
thing while just 19 percent said it was a bad thing.

The
reason drone strikes are popular? Because they are perceived
to be effective in reducing the threat of terrorism without
endangering American lives. (Polling on the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan has, for several years now, suggested that a
majority of the public believes neither was worth fighting
almost certainly due to the losses of American lives.) In a
September 2011 Post-ABC poll, three-quarters of the
public said drone strikes against suspected terrorists in
Yemen and Pakistan had been either ”very” or “somewhat”
effective to reduce the threat of terrorism.

Now
there are all sorts of “to be sure” statements regarding the
data above. To be sure, the average American isn’t paying
close attention to the issue of drones and how they are
being used. To be sure, the debate over what the government
can and can’t do as well as how much or little it should be
required to tells its citizenry its doing is a worthy one.
To be sure, making policy decisions simply based on what the
public wants (or thinks it wants) is a dangerous game.

But,
it’s also important to remember as the drone debate gains
steam in Washington that there is little public appetite for
an extended look at how unmanned attacks fit into our
broader national security policy. Minds are made up on the
matter. And, if the public has anything to do with it,
drones are here to stay.

We ask readers to play a proactive role and click
the "Report link [at the base of each comment] when
in your opinion, comments cross the line and become
purely offensive, racist or disrespectful to others.

In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)